There may have been a misguided furoe over the Dahl shed the other week, which Alex covered well, but now Sheddie john Kingston has emailed to say he may have a shed that is less than 500k – it’s £117,500, he is selling his unique Crystal Workshop shed – and it comes with a Free 5 bedroom seaside family home- result.
Here is Johns overview on the shedbuild as you can see a lot of work was done..
The shed was built around the Crittall window which was salvaged from a house built in 1948.
I put the whole thing on three brick piers to elevate the floor and give some storage underneath for firewood etc.
A 3 x 2 wooden framework was screwed together then an 18mm marine ply shell fixed to form the top and sides, the window was then slotted into place.
The wood was coated with an acrylic waterproofer, the ‘box’ was complete and weatherproof now, it just need cladding.
Inside I put fibreglass rockwool into the floor, roof and sides.
The internal walls were clad in chipboard and plywood, with a boxed Aluminium treadplate skirting ( trunking?) around the bottom to take the electric cabling and phone line.
Metal clad sockets were then fitted just above the skirtings.About 120 reclaimed slates on the roof and lead flashing on the front edge.
The walls were to be clad in metal sheeting.
I had just scrapped an old milk float, (that’s another story), but kept the diamond-pattern Aluminium sheet from the flat bed, you can see how it has worn smooth from many a milk crate being slid across it – brilliant!
I put this on the side around the door – the was also reclaimed – from a victorian outhouse!
Now for the front. I had to buy some Aluminium for this, it cost around £90 – the biggest outlay on the job.
I fancied breaking the surface up into panels but didn’t want it to be in a regular pattern, after a few sketches I came up with a network of jagged plates and marked them onto the shed with masking tape.
Each panel was cut with hand shears and the edges folded over to make them smooth. I didn’t want to have fastenings down all the edges so fixed each piece with Stainless screws at the window and the outer edge,
I stuck the rest down with an external frame sealant – the type you use on windows.
The metal was coated in a clear lacquer – sprayed on, then I made some doors to cover the bottom storage area up, these were painted in black biumen to give the silver shed a ‘floating on air’ look – held up only by its one corner leg!
The interior was then fitted with a long thin work top and a birch ply desk.
It’s been used as a painting studio, office, shed and workshop, quite a useful little building!
Costs were very little as a lot of materials were reclaimed or cheap, for instance I bought the lead flashing from the scrap yard not from Wickes!, so the whole thing was done for under £300 and took – a couple of months working at the weekends.
John has set up a webpage if you are interested in buying this shed and getting a house to boot.
Maybe we can club together and save the shed for the nation? 😉
